How to Use Firefox Focus and Mullvad to Boost Your iPhone’s Safety

Let’s assume you’re using the stock browsing app that comes preinstalled on your iPhone, which is on every Apple device, from iPad to Mac. Of course, I’m talking about Safari.

Because the iPhone’s operating system (iOS) is a walled garden, Apple favors Safari, which offers greater integration into iOS than competing browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Brave, and Mullvad.

There are ways to add bits of protection from certain other apps to Safari on iOS, though. It’s free and simple, so stay with me for a minute or two to learn how to boost your iPhone browsing.

The steps:

First up, download The Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox Focus from the App Store. This is different from the regular Firefox browser. Once it’s downloaded, go into its settings menu. This will only take a minute; I promise. There aren’t many settings to mess around with. You’ll see some obvious choices titled “tracking protection” and “block web fonts.” Toggle those on.

Then scroll down a little and do the same for “Safari Integration.” That’s it. You can close out of the app, move it to a folder, and ignore it. Firefox Focus’s protections will carry over to Safari.

Next, download Mullvad VPN from the App Store. Nope, you’re not going to use it as a VPN (unless you want to), nor are you going to have to pay the fee that comes along with the VPN service itself. You’re just going to borrow Mullvad’s DNS protections, not use its VPN.

The details for setting this up are a bit more involved, so I’m going to leave it to Mullvad’s instructions. Scroll down to “iOS/iPadOS,” and follow the directions. If it’s too much tinkering for you, that’s fine. At least you’ve got Firefox Focus’s integrations set up for you.

Lastly, don’t forget to go through Safari’s settings and turn on the security protections in that app, too, and consider replacing Google with DuckDuckGo, a more privacy-oriented search engine, as your default search within Safari.